"Why should I pay you anything? You've told me where it is and what it is. I can find it for myself."
The Stranger laughed. "I said beyond Pluto; that covers a lot of space, Mr. Firth." He paused for a moment. "My price is the stock in your Martian mines. Convert the rest of your holdings into any form of wealth that seems convenient and usable. In your case, Mr. Firth, you can take it with you—to your own world. Think of it! No taxes; no social problems; no unfortunate masses to prey on your conscience; no government but your own."
That was the beginning of the dream. The seed of the idea grew in John Firth's mind until it over-shadowed everything else. It became an obsession, driving him so that he had no peace.
During the course of a year Firth and the Stranger imported and installed the machinery to make the sphere livable: hydroponic tanks, air machines, gravitators, electric generators and an Atomic Power Core. In the crust of the planetoid they found enough fissionable material to keep Firth's world running for an eternity. They laid out the decorative landscaping, planned the living quarters, the laboratories, the amusement hall and the university.
It is interesting to speculate how much the Stranger contributed to the scheme; and it is an ironic speculation, for as soon as the larger idea took shape in Firth's mind, his only logical course was to murder the Stranger.
Firth could allow no outsider to know of the planetoid. To him it had become far more than a means of personal escape. It was to be an archive for the survival of John Firth's ideas, for the survival of civilization itself. John Firth believed that sincerely.
Firth's world—that magnificent dream which was like a holy crusade—was founded on murder, deception and greed. The reasoning of fanaticism engenders its own kind of ruthlessness. As soon as John Firth had disposed of the Stranger, he began to select his colonists. Men who by his definition, were not fools. He had to make his choice very carefully. If he misjudged his candidate and his proposition was rejected, Firth had given away his secret. Any man who refused him had to die. Murder was Firth's only guarantee of silence.
But he made few mistakes. John Firth was a good judge of men—his kind of men. All of them were wealthy, ambitious, brilliant. Nearly three hundred men and women were recruited.
They came here to escape; the record tells us that until we gag over the repetition. But to escape what? Taxes they resented unanimously, and restrictions on their freedom. They placed a value on the ownership of property that we can no longer understand. But, if you read the record closely, all that becomes superfluous. The thing they wanted to escape was responsibility. Responsibility to their fellow men.